The History of First-Person Shooters: Part 4

If only more shooters were this colourful.

After such a spectacular year, 2005 was a comparative letdown, with incremental improvements the order of the day, and numerous much-trumpeted sequels failing to do justice to their own publicity. TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, Rainbow Six Lockdown, Vietcong 2, Perfect Dark Zero, Serious Sam 2 and Quake IV all fell short of expectations, albeit partly because Bungie, Valve and id had raised the bar so high.

There were a few notable exceptions, though. SWAT 4, Project: Snowblind and Star Wars Republic Commando were all curiously under-appreciated at the time, but now stand apart as some of the more interesting titles of the era – ditto the flawed first person RPG gems Boiling Point, and Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, two games worth exploring even now. Another title which perhaps under-performed at the time was Monolith’s F.E.A.R. – an orgy of slo-mo uber-violence, dripping Asian horror-infused atmosphere.

F.E.A.R. Slow-motion ballistics, meet survival horror.

As ever, war games were plentiful, with Battlefield 2 and its console cousin Battlefield 2: Modern Combat generating significant revenues for EA and Digital Illusions, while Call of Duty 2 put Activision and Infinity Ward well on the road towards dominance of the World War II sub-genre. By contrast, EA’s Medal of Honor: European Assault was content to tread water.

Quake 4 proved underwhelming, but the best was yet to come for Xbox 360.

The release of the Xbox 360 in winter 2005 left few developers in any doubt about where to market first person shooters over the remainder of the decade. Geared heavily towards the shooter space, the system made its entrance alongside the formidable trio of Quake IV, Call of Duty 2 and Perfect Dark Zero, alongside other first person titles like Condemned and King Kong. The new console was quickly dubbed the “shooter box”.

Click on for Part 5 and the events of the past four years. Crysis. Portal. Left 4 Dead. We’ve never had it better, basically.